After a huge road bridge collapsed without warning in America last week, engineers are urgently checking similar structures here

For Peter Siddons the drive home across the St Anthony bridge in Minneapolis was looking like the same uneventful commute that he had made for 15 years. The traffic had slowed to a crawl because repair works had closed most of the lanes. The river flowed lazily below.

Then out of nowhere came a rumbling roar and his car nose-dived. Tumbling into a whirling dust cloud, he realised that the bellowing denials of "No, God, no" were his own. As Siddons, an executive at the Wells Fargo bank, clung to the steering wheel of his plummeting car, the face of Lisa, his wife, flashed before his eyes. Then his car crashed down on top of another, crumpling both vehicles. Miraculously he survived.

"I opened my door and stumbled out. My leg hurt but I was alive, so alive I could not quite believe it," he said. "I just stood there